A warming climate is beginning to nibble at crop yields worldwide. The United Nations predicts that there will be one to three billion more people to feed by midcentury.

Yet even as the Obama administration says it wants to stimulate innovation by eliminating unnecessary regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to require even more data on genetically modified crops, which have been improved using technology with great promise and a track record of safety. The process for approving these crops has become so costly and burdensome that it is choking off innovation.

Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology. The use of chemicals for fertilization and for pest and disease control, the induction of beneficial mutations in plants with chemicals or radiation to improve yields, and the mechanization of agriculture have all increased the amount of food that can be grown on each acre of land by as much as 10 times in the last 100 years.

Discuss this Article 1

Anonymous (not verified)

on Sep 4, 2012

People depend on healthy food. The more we know about GMo the better off we all are. Just because you don't know that anything bad is caused by GMO doesn't mean it isn't happening. We used to think that white flour was just as good as brown before we found out the truth. Cheap foos isn't everything...people will pay whatever is required for good healthy food. Meanwhile any proof required by EPA is probably not enough.